Updating Rob’s gallery are images of a 1850’s padlock and of the first hand-held daguerreotype he made with his custom made camera.

Expanding Jerry’s gallery page is a selection of his stunning portraiture. Unmistakably the work of Jerry and with a few art world celebrities in it as well..

Keeping our galleries international are the becquerel images of Rossano Bertolo from Gorizia, Italy. Rossano is definately of the new generation of practitioners, making his first image just over two months ago. Like many of us he received advice and inspiration from a more experienced daguerreotypist, in Rossano’s case it was Giancarlo De Noia.

An interesting news story gleaned from the internet within hours of being published lead us to tracking down our latest artist Gallery. Tyler Suppha-Atthasitt is a lab tech and an adjunct professor of photography at Weber State University in Utah. New to the process and working out the exposure by theory he accomplished a self portrait that most would have given up on, but with true Daguerreian perseverance he succeeded. When he told me of the exposure I wrote back saying you meant 24 seconds right?:

“I indeed meant 24 minutes. It was shot with a 150mm only a few feet away. I was using sunlight through a sliding glass door and lying on the ground as to minimize head movement. I have generally been determining my exposures around a base time of 45 sec @ f/5.6 to get an EV of 14 to reproduce as a mid tone. From there, I count stops, zone technique, to figure compensating exposures. This was the only way I could make sense of it. In the end it wasn’t composed how I would prefer, but it’s tough to figure it out when working the camera yourself. 24 minutes, it was quite meditative”

Daguerreotypes from Tyler can be seen on his page in the galleries section. The full news story can be seen at: www.standard.net

Adding to the contemporary equipment galleries are the finely made Cameras of Ray Morgenweck. As well as the more well known camera styles, Ray offers a reproduction of the Wolcott camera which harks back to the origins of photographic portraiture and the Daguerreotype in America. Well beyond pinhole photography the no lens camera employs a 8 inch concave mirror to focus an image on the plate.

The Daguerreotypes of Walter Johnson also grace our new look galleries section of the website. Walter recalls his life long love of Daguerreotypy:

“I had started to work on making “Dags” the fall of 1969 using damaged 9th plates from my collection. I made an fuming box from discarded parts and pieces, and used a 6X9 format plate camera for my first efforts. My frist “Dag” was made late OCT. or early Nov, of the front of the arts building, [Hayes Hall], on the OSU oval. I don’t have a clue as to where that image is today, and wish now that I had taken better care of my early efforts.
 
It was after I had received my set of custom “Dag” tools made for me by Jim Ambrecht, [he made three sets of tools, one set for Marvin Kresman, one for himself, and the third for me], that I was able to improve te quality of my images. I would work every wekend that the weather permitted and before long I could with some certainly predict results. My History of Photography class, [502], was doing quite well and I wanted to include a live “Dag” demo in the classroom and thought that the best way was to have a guest speaker to do it. The day of my demo, I said the our guest speaker was “Prof. Simon Alexander Wooley”; I then turned my back to the class and put on the long tail black coat,a bow tie, and the beaver top hat, then turned to the class and announced that I was now Prof. Simon Alexander Wooley, [read the full story in The Daguerreian Society Newsletter, Sept-Oct 2006]. After that first demostration made by my “DAG” guest, I could be certain that every “Dag” demo would insure a full classroom.
 
It was not long after my classroom demos that several of the advanced photo students came to me and asked that I conduct a class to teach them the 19th century photographic processes with a strong emphasis placed on the Daguerreotype and Wet-plate processes. I believe that this may have been the first college credit class offerimg instruction in the 19th century photographic processes in America.
 
While I do continue to work at making “Dags” yet today, and have constructed two cameras just for that task with high speed lenses to shorten the exposures. With “Dags” there is a certain pleasure that come over me in having an acceptable image, and quickly forget the effort that was required. I’m also very pleased to know of the many “Dag” makers active today, and hope that there will always be those few photographers who fine true pleasure in continuing to work with the most historic photographic process.
 
Walter Johnson”

Adding to Jerry Spagnoli’s gallery is a view of Obama’s inauguration. While the view of Obama is small, the image itself looms large, congratulations Jerry!

Making our largest artist gallery are the images of Rob McElroy. Another veteran of the process Rob too has mastered the process over many years. In his own words:

“I have been a professional photographer since 1980, and I first learned the daguerreotype process in 1997 at a George Eastman House Historic Process Workshop taught by daguerreian expert Ken Nelson. I was the first of Ken’s many students to make my own daguerreotypes using all of my own equipment, most of which I had to design and build myself.

Ken’s advanced class came the next year, and what followed was my singular pursuit, over the past 10 years, to work at achieving a level of technical perfection with the process, that would rival the daguerreian masters of the 1850s, and which would allow me to expose my own artistic vision onto the surface of the most beautiful, life-like and hauntingly mysterious photographic process ever invented, the daguerreotype.

The goal of my many years of research and experimentation has been to achieve a uniformly-polished, evenly-sensitized (from edge-to-edge) daguerreotype plate — that has a full range of tones, and is predictable and consistent from one plate to the next. I can finally say, I have reached my goal. In addition to Ken, I owe much of my inspiration and technical expertise to Irving Pobboravsky, the modern master of this most difficult of mediums. No one has advanced the knowledge and understanding of the daguerreotype more than Irv has.

I have achieved a few unique firsts with the daguerreotype process. I was the first person to expose a daguerreotype using electronic flash, and many of the images in my gallery here were produced using it. The electronic flash also allowed me to be the first person to stop-action on a daguerreotype plate; see my image of a swinging strand of pearls, frozen in mid-air. I also designed and built a candid daguerreian camera which allows me to make hand-held daguerreotypes utilizing a very fast modern lens. In addition, I have invented a new archival sealing tape for daguerreotypes which prevents air incursion into the enclosure, and which also scavenges-out any harmful atmospheric vapors that may have been trapped inside the enclosure when it was sealed. My daguerreian gallery in Buffalo, NY may be the first permanent gallery in over 100 years — to be designed and built exclusively to display daguerreotypes.

The daguerreotype is my passion, and now that it is under my control, instead of it controlling me, I will be making many new and exciting images that are not only mysterious and beautiful, but that also challenge the limits of the process, producing tones, contrasts and reflections that other processes can’t even hope to achieve.”

Following on from the exhibition annoucement is the addition of an artist gallery for Binh Danh with a selection of 9 images by Binh.

“Binh Danh was born in Viet Nam and immigrated to the United States in 1980. After acquiring a BFA in photography at San Jose State University, Binh Danh received an MFA in studio art at Stanford University in 2004. Binh Danh’s work is in the permanent collections of Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; M.H. de Young Museum, San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College,
Chicago; Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, New York; and Philadelphia Museum of Art.”